Notices by Michael Tae Sweeney (mtsw@mastodon.social)

unironically

Hey if you're here because Twitter/X is down, just stay here. Delete the Twitter app from your phone - like genuinely tab out and do it right now - lock your account when the site's back up, and stop posting there already.

You can tell Twitter has really lost it when it's not even the number one app people are complaining about on bsky and mastodon

I was sort of pleasantly surprised that the cops were taking this so seriously instead of victim-blaming or helping the shooter until I got to the part of the story where the cops clarified that she was "from a good family" (daughter of a corrections officer).

Man Charged With Murder in Shooting of Woman Who Went Up Wrong Driveway https://nyti.ms/3ojvfuM

Democrats would be smart to run on this instead of on inscrutable "enhanced background checks and waiting periods" or whatever. "we will ban the AR-15" is a winning message.

https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/vacant-housing-lowest-in-census-history

Basically indistinguishable from the rationalizations people come up with to backslide on quitting smoking:

https://andy-bell.co.uk/i-think-im-not-alone-that-mastodon-is-giving-me-the-ick/

I'm really torn on people who know staying on Twitter is wrong between thinking it's advantageous to admit that, yes, it totally sucks that he has bought the site and forced us into this mess, and also saying the ask here (merely stop posting) is so unimaginably small and tiny.

"I won't support Elon Musk under any circumstances, but I want to post on Twitter, therefore posting on Twitter does not support Elon Musk. QED!"

Agree with all of this.

I think its really underrated also how much auto dependency and the (very recently changed) norm that children under 14 or so are never allowed to be in public unsupervised have put an absolutely insane and unworkable burden on parents. https://slate.com/business/2023/03/steven-rattner-new-york-times-remote-work-commute-child-care.html

Gonna be goddamn wild when we learn years from now that Elon ordered his developers to DDOS mastodon whenever Twitter went down.

The electric vehicle tipping point is closer than you think it is.

I think 2023 will likely be the last year you'll be able to theoretically justify purchasing an ICE vehicle as being a superior financial decision, when total cost of ownership, fuel and resale value are all taken into consideration.
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2023/03/03/ford-increasing-production-of-popular-electric--gas--hybrid-vehi.html

Welcome back to a bunch of people who started accounts on Mastodon in November then slunk back to Twitter hoping things wouldn't get worse.

Take my advice and just stay here next time! Uninstall the Twitter mobile app and install either Tusky (android) or Ivory (iOS) and start following people here. You won't need to go back!

I won't lie and say the transition is *painless*... it takes like... 72 hours and some clicking to get set up and used to it?

Many of the conservatives who are pushing hardest for book bans in public schools homeschool their kids or send them to private schools.

They still push for this because destruction of public schools as an engine of egalitarianism, democracy and social mobility serves their larger ideological goals of having an unequal society with "good people" like them at the top, served by exploited and ignorant poor underneath.

If anyone actually cared in a neutral way about "free speech" and "cancel culture" or whatever they would be up in arms about this, but they're of course silent because the cause @ultracricket was fired for speaking up for was saving our planet, not bigotry https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/opinion/scientist-fired-climate-change-activism.html

It's pretty remarkable how much Elon's Twitter takeover is a textbook fascist takeover: leftists immediately purged, censorship regime imposed behind the scenes, secret police rooting out enemies, right wing terrorism supported by the state, etc and how uncannily similar the mainstream liberal response of pretending nothing is wrong is, even with *very low* costs of walking out the door and refusing to collaborate.

By design, and why raising congressional salaries and staffer salaries produces better governance.

RT @rbreich
The first Gen Z Congress member was denied a D.C. apartment due to bad credit.

Freshman reps don’t get a paycheck until February even though they start working on January 3rd.

Congress is inaccessible to those who don't have wealth.

It’s designed to keep working people out.

https://mastodon.social/@rbreich@masto.ai/109514560338745374

Increasing the supply of housing near DC or finally allowing congress to work remotely from their districts would also help a lot.

Paying MPs a salary was a major demand of the Labour Party in 19th century Britain for exactly this reason. Reactionaries had long-ago figured out that restricting Parliament to only those who are independently wealthy (or in hoc to them) made it easier to control power.

Americans generally have dogshit-tier intuitions about this stuff. They think part time state legislatures, term limits and underpaid staff mean government is closer to the people when it really just creates a revolving door where legislators are under the thumb of lobbyists.